On 07 Mar 2012, at 21:08 , Dinse, Gregg (NIH/NIEHS) [E] wrote: > I am not knowingly running any databases. Is there an easy way to tell?
I think you need to open up console and in the search field type 'backupd' You should see blocks like this about every hour: 07-Mar-12 11:06:23.090 PM com.apple.backupd: Starting standard backup 07-Mar-12 11:06:23.248 PM com.apple.backupd: Backing up to: /Volumes/Tardis/Backups.backupdb 07-Mar-12 11:07:20.868 PM com.apple.backupd: 10.17 GB required (including padding), 240.40 GB available 07-Mar-12 11:08:16.084 PM com.apple.backupd: Copied 4497 files (291.4 MB) from volume Usain. 07-Mar-12 11:08:17.869 PM com.apple.backupd: Copied 4531 files (291.4 MB) from volume Mufasa. 07-Mar-12 11:08:19.000 PM com.apple.backupd: 9.83 GB required (including padding), 240.10 GB available 07-Mar-12 11:08:27.830 PM com.apple.backupd: Copied 2178 files (423 KB) from volume Usain. 07-Mar-12 11:08:29.272 PM com.apple.backupd: Copied 2212 files (423 KB) from volume Mufasa. 07-Mar-12 11:08:33.488 PM com.apple.backupd: Starting post-backup thinning 07-Mar-12 11:08:45.430 PM com.apple.backupd: Deleted /Volumes/Tardis/Backups.backupdb/cerebus (3)/2012-03-06-220932 (203.4 MB) 07-Mar-12 11:08:45.430 PM com.apple.backupd: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed 07-Mar-12 11:08:45.658 PM com.apple.backupd: Backup completed successfully. You will, if you look at this, notice two things. One, the backup took 2m21s; two, despite requiring 10.17GB the backup actually only backed up 291.4MB from two drives. (I forgot to exclude my old boot drive). 291.4MB is probably just the spotlight index. > How much of my system drive should I exclude from TimeMachine? I certainly > want to backup my home directory, but should I exclude /Applications, > /Developer, /Library, or /System? /Developer? Probably. It's pretty straightforward to just reinstall it if you have to restore your computer. Depends on if you store anything in there or not. I don't, so I don't back it up. As for /System and /Library it depends. If your machine dies and you have to replace it, are you going to want to restore your system just the way it was, or do you want to leave the new system as it is and just restore 'your stuff'? If the latter, then exclude /System and /Library. However, be aware that files in there change rarely, so once it is backed up, it's pretty much done with them. As for /Applications… I think it's easier to back it up and restore it, but some apps (like anything from Adobe) will not work, so it may or may not be useful to you. -- Hello Diane, I'm Bucky Goldstein _______________________________________________ MacOSX-talk mailing list MacOSX-talk@omnigroup.com http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
